Really Internet: Are ‘Gravity Falls’ and ‘Rick and Morty’ Connected By One Character?

When you talk about popular television, most networks make a point of telling their fans when to expect new episodes. Rick and Morty has never been and never will be most shows. After a vague promise of a third season at the end of 2015 and a surprise premiere in April, we’re now halfway through the year without any concrete news about when to expect new episodes. All we know is that new episodes are expected to premiere sometime this summer, and show creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roilanddefinitely aren’t fighting. In the absence of any real Rick and Morty news, the internet has stepped up to do what it does best — speculate wildly.

There are dozens of well-researched fan theories out there about this 22-episode series as well as an endless well of disturbing fan art. However, the theory I want to explore today focuses on one of its more confusing and unexpected elements. Welcome to Really Internet, a section of the web devoted to exploring the weird, plausible, and dark world of internet fan theories. Buckle up because today we’re diving into a possible connection into two of the internet’s favorite shows — Rick and Morty and Gravity Falls.

WHAT’S THE THEORY?

Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty is about a constantly drunk mad scientist who takes his grandson on adventures through space and time. Disney XD’s Gravity Falls is about two twins who spend their summer vacation with their grunkle (great uncle) and end up having the occult adventure of a lifetime. They are two very different shows with very different tones that have little in common.

However, one Redditor has theorized that Mr. Poopybutthole, Rick’s friend who mysteriously appeared in Season 2’s “Total Rickall,” is much more than another zany character. He’s actually another incarnation of Bill, the dream demon overlord who terrorized the Pine family for decades.

WHY IT’S NOT THAT CRAZY

It’s essentially cannon that these universes are connected in some way. Rick and Morty’s co-creator Justin Roiland has been friends with Gravity Falls’ Alex Hirsch for years, and, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hirsch said the two always dreamed of having their own weird shows that they could connect together. That’s essentially what Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty are, avenues for these two creators to express their brilliant weirdness. In that same interview, Hirsch said they wanted to “wildly abuse” that power in an attempt to drive fans crazy, and they’ve been largely successful in that feat.

References to each show are scattered throughout the other. For example, in “Society of the Blind Eye,” some office supplies from the Gravity Falls universe are sucked into a portal. Later, those same supplies fall out of a different portal in an episode of Rick and Morty. Also, there’s a secret message in one of the official Gravity Falls journals that translates to “Rick was here.” These worlds are already connected, so it’s not that insane to think their characters would connect too.

All of this brings me to two of the most confusing characters of both series: Bill Cipher and Mr. Poopybutthole. Of the two, Bill weirdly makes more sense. The demigod is a dream demon who becomes obsessed with taking over Gravity Falls through the main characters’ minds. He’s an unseen presence throughout most of the show’s 40-episode run, but he makes himself very well known in the show’s final episodes. Similarly, Mr. Poopybutthole is a character who is completely unknown throughout most of Rick and Morty’s run, but after he’s introduced, he becomes oddly omnipresent in the series. He’s the character who closed out Season 2, for Rick’s sake.

Reddit user CaptainCyoomin’s theory takes several big narrative leaps: What if Bill, who was trapped in Stan’s mind and supposedly eliminated in Gravity Falls’ last episode, survived? And what if Ford decided to take his brother to another dimension to eliminate Bill for good? And what if that dimension happened to be Nuptia 4, the same place where Beth and Gary received intergalactic couples counseling in “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez”? The theory goes on to explain that the thought manifestation techniques Nuptia 4 uses could have allowed to Bill to return in another form. Basically, if a lot of things went wrong and if several people were are the right place at the wrong time, it’s possible the most powerful god of weird from Gravity Falls could have reformed himself to become a tiny banana man who uses “Oh wee!” as a catchphrase.

Bill from Gravity Falls can be seen in the background of Rick and Morty.Photo: Hulu, Adult Swim

WHY IT’S QUESTIONABLE

While there’s no real evidence to disprove CaptainCyoomin’s theory, there’s a lot of mental gymnastics that go into this one. Roiland and Hirsch are both incredibly smart and talented creators, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve completely connected the dots between their weird worlds.

That being said, we’re talking about one show that hid an intricate code at the end of every episode for 40 episodes and another that’s managed to be so narratively twisting, it’s shocked its devoted audience on multiple occasions. I fully believe that Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty are connected in some deeply intricate and mind-blowing way, and Bill and Mr. Poopybutthole are probably part of it. However, even this confusing fan theory feels a bit too polished for these ambitious shows.